Missed me:::::::::::

The State of Texas began de-mobilization this morning at 6 am... bringing everyone home from the valley and sending assets back home... the command center where chairs and tables were being fought over yesterday morning are in abundance and in the way today.. about half as many folk over there as today... traffic jams of ambulances and busses going home... some wierdness.. we have showers for the shelters being installed by tonight.. for maybe 12 hours use .. they are using the haz mat decontamination unit of the local firefighters to take showers .. it is akin to standing in a car wash.. that damn wand looks like it hurts...

this has been a wierd excercise.. we have a very skeleton crew.. but six new people showed up today. We only have two ESF groups here.. (Planning and OPS) and the wierdness of USDA veterinarians (I guess VMATS is not really around anymore>>???) five Logistics people showed up today and a new planning person.. and I think we are going home thursday night... I got a few pictures... nothing spectacular.. .. i will try to make a picture post of some of this with annotations.

I just have the best hotel room... marriot Plaza downtown.. place has an awesome pool area, restrauant and even room service which I have not used..... kinda pricey but they make the government rate... there is strangeness in the parking down there.. i guess there is like no place at all to park in the city so they charge an arm and a leg.. if you go in and out of the parking lot during the day it is up to $19 a day... since i am gone 12 hours at a time it is free.. go figure.

There is a chance i am going to be able to go home later this week. There is some chance i may have to go back to Denton and I will post that as I find it out. What an interesting deployment.

Artful Dodger::::::::::::::

The morning briefing suggests we are going to be missed by a wide margin and likely Dean is heading for the dark heart of Mexico..... Ihave seen too many hurricanes turn due north after hitting the Yucatan though.. the high forehead types are saying something about a high stuck over Texas holding it down there.. yada yada yada.... Anyway they are using the word Demobilization here (we have one box to pack and outa here... ).. I never even got a phone, laptop or new badge.

This is a pretty big show though.. this morning driving in I saw a pad of an old building that had something under 200 ambulances parked door to door facing east. They had 600 school busses setting on a building pad half a mile over for deployment for evacuation and 6 fixed wing aircraft (great big C-130s) and another 6 helicopters sitting on the Air force base apron awaiting 24 hour operations.. these guys were seriously ready for the shit to hit the fan. They were ready for something in excess of 200,000 evacuees to hit the city of San Antonio.

The funny part about this is .... this is a State operation.. we are here as guests.. literally sitting on our hands.. (FEMA is used to throwing its weight around .. when we deploy we are the boss for the most part and our managers and ops people are not very well practiced in being observers and resources for questions.. a learning experience for our group.. kinda fun to see). My job would have been to prepare the place for a bigger FEMA presence in case the disaster got declared and we grew to our normal FEMA size... so I have had a badge and access to every part of this preparation and had not a single dedicated task in the whole thing. What a fun trip.

Now comes our De-Mobilization plan... (pack the one FEMA phone, put my laptop back in the bag, do expenses, do my time sheet and go home.... :-D) we can leave a dark room 20 minutes after we get the word this time.. usually it takes a week to break down an installation. I look forward to going home although it is possible they will ask me to go back to region for some reason. I am not wild about cooling my heels in Denton.. saw all i need to see of that operation last Friday afternoon.

More as it becomes clear to me.

On the Road Again::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Hi guys.. it has been awhile. I got deployed to first Denton and now San Antonio to stand in front of Hurricane Dean. It has been an interesting trip.. I have to be either available or deployed for 60 days a year to maintain my active status with FEMA. We had some words between Region and myself about the terms of the contract I renewed with them this past spring. :-D eventually they saw things the way I read the words........ So I made myself available Aug 1 and I am going to do my 60 days of service and call it a year unless something interesting comes along.

I had a different mission this time.. I am "forward deployed" ahead of Hurricane Dean which was once forcast to hit the center of the Texas Gulf Coast.. and is not forcast to hit mexico way south of us... Frankly i am not sure.. once it hits the Yucatan it usually turns north a lot.. last couple that hit there did that.

I am embeded in the State of Texas evacuation center on an old air base in San Antonio. I am with an IT weenie from Denton and the two of us are FEMA for this site. There are hundreds of state and local officials, fire and rescue and police here from everywhere planning evacuations and executing their plans for a big hurricane coming ashore. I have to say.. these guys were ready to rock as soon as a blip occured on the satellite imagery. FEMA will not have a role till a disaster is declared but we are here in an advisory capacity till it hits .. and when the rest of the staff gets here today we should see all our OPS and management features in place to just hand off to the state when they ask.. it is very cool. If it does hit shore here I will likely be forward deployed to help build Disaster Recovery Centers toward the coast from the JFO which is already in Austin for this disaster.

Could be home in a week or six...LOL who knows. anyway.. it is back in the grind.. i am enjoying my new pay grade although I am still a grunt in all ways practical.